In a series of tweets today, Elon Musk, the Tesla/SpaceX CEO, world’s richest man and tech billionaire who recently announced he is voting republican, announced his intent to set up what he calls a “hardcore litigation department” filled with “hardcore streetfighters” because “there will be blood”:
This announcement is bookended by Elon Musk’s deal to purchase the Twitter social media platform, a resistant internal company ideological adversary, and a warning from the political left with Business Insider publishing an alleged sexual misconduct story. Indeed, it does appear that Elon Musk is preparing for a war that will likely include the Fourth Branch of Government as an adversary.
Additionally, Elon Musk is drawing attention to the corruption in the 2016 election by spotlighting the trial of Hillary Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann. Mr. Musk notes in his remarks that discovering the Trump-Russia collusion story was a hoax put together by the Clinton campaign, media and allies in government, “makes you wonder what else is fake.”
Earlier today, the installed occupant of the White House, Joe Biden, flanked by Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, said the two countries would “make NATO stronger.”
With great enthusiasm Biden called their applications join the NATO pact a “victory for democracy,” as the proxy war in Ukraine continues. The speech transcript – is here, and the White House readout of the meeting – is here.
“President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. met today with Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of Sweden and President Sauli Niinistö of Finland and warmly welcomed their applications for NATO membership, which will strengthen our collective security. At this historic moment for both Finland and Sweden, the President underscored his commitment to support both countries as they seek formal NATO accession, including by working with NATO Allies and Congress to welcome them into the Alliance as quickly as possible. The leaders also discussed their ongoing cooperation on shared global challenges, and their commitment to continued strong support for Ukraine.” (LINK)
Joe Biden also thanked Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell for their bipartisan support to affirm Sweden and Finland. “I greatly appreciate Senator Schumer and McConnell’s support, as well as Senator Menendez and Risch, to move this through the Senate as quickly as possible once the perspective of all Allies are addressed and NATO adopts the accession protocols,” he said.
Meanwhile, according to the same people, Russia putting a military base in Cuba is an existential threat to world peace.
Montana Senator Jon Tester is deeply connected to the corrupt and multinational Big Agricultural (BigAg) lobby. As a democrat connected closer to Wall Street, he is not a supporter of American farmers overall as it pertains to America First food security and domestic food prices. However, that said, what Senator Tester says in the first two minutes of this interview is correct.
As Tester notes, the food “supply” issue is not as big a deal in North America as it will certainly be in food dependent regions. Between the U.S, Mexico and Canada we produce more food than we consume, and with excellence in industrial farming we export food products to the world, eastward and westward. The issue for the U.S. population is going to be massive increases in food prices in later summer and fall as the cumulative increase in costs at the field reach the stores. WATCH (2 mins):
My own back of the envelope calculations put the third-wave price increase in the 35 to 40% range overall. Based on the input costs, energy and transportation, a current $4.00 item is going to cost around $5.50 later this year. That is the approximate scale of price increase in foodstuff we should be anticipating.
Food insecurity, as an outcome of food pricing, is going to be the election issue that might supersede the gasoline price issue. That’s going to be the crisis, and we are going to need to be very careful; because depending on the scale of the crisis there are going to be massive numbers of people demanding the government step in to solve it. Our current government is being run by economic socialists; we do not want their equitable distribution solutions.
The $40 billion UniParty aid package for Ukraine pass the senate this afternoon in a vote of 86-11 (vote tally below).
The Biden administration had originally requested $33 billion, but congress did not feel he was spending enough. The House added an additional $7 billion and passed the $40 billion legislation last week. Today the Senate voted 86-11 to approve the package which is targeted to last 5 months and includes U.S. taxpayers funding the salaries and pension benefits for officials in the Ukraine government.
11 republican senators voted against the massive money laundering operation. They were Senators Blackburn (R-TN), Boozman (R-AR), Braun (R-IN), Crapo (R-ID), Hagerty (R-TN), Hawley (R-MO), Lee (R-UT), Lummis (R-WY), Marshall (R-KS), Paul (R-KY), Tuberville (R-AL).
The second day of witness testimony in the trial of Michael Sussmann for lying to the FBI was completed on Wednesday. For a good recap of the granular aspects Techno Fog has a play-by-play SUMMARY HERE.
For CTH readers I want to focus on a point that is visible in the defense argument and challenging, insofar as it has not yet been revealed, in the prosecution position. The issue surrounds why Rodney Joffe gave the Alfa-bank fraudulent information to Michael Sussmann instead of just giving it to the FBI himself. {A Question Margot Cleveland posits here}
In the cross examination of the first set of prosecution witnesses the defense lawyers keep contending that Sussmann did not lie about the fraudulently created origin of the Alfa-Bank material and there was no reason for him not to tell the FBI he was a courier for the Clinton campaign. The defense is essentially that Sussmann and the FBI knew he was working for the Clinton campaign when he delivered the fraudulent material. Sussmann wasn’t trying to hide anything, ergo he didn’t lie.
Sussmann’s defensive point is essentially true. The DOJ, FBI and everyone associated with the information knew they were receiving opposition research from the Clinton campaign. However, the FBI had to pretend they didn’t know in order to use it to start an investigation.
Interesting background discussions today, very interesting. There are some aspects to the Washington Post story about DHS abandoning, at least temporarily, the Dept of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board.
WaPo represents the CIA public relations/narrative engineers, so it doesn’t come as a surprise they would be the announcing outlet for the leaked information. There’s also an interesting aspect in who was selected to write the article, Taylor Lorenz, the conscripted narrative engineer and lead on-line counterintelligence/propaganda pusher. [LINK]
However, beyond the background intelligence motive; and accepting the expressed intent of the DHS ministry of truth effort; notice the picture Lorenz published to accompany the notification (see above). “Nina Jankowicz … works in a press room at Volodymyr Zelensky’s campaign headquarters in 2019 in Kyiv, Ukraine.” Quite telling.
The takeaway from the above data points, outlines how long the DHS has been planning to use the conflict in Ukraine to advance the agenda of the State Dept and intelligence apparatus (CIA). When combined with the rapid response from big tech search engine notifications about removing on-line content that contradicted the official position of the U.S. government toward the Ukraine conflict (Google and DuckDuckGo), what we see is a very fulsome picture of how the U.S. government advanced propaganda was being constructed.
Pennsylvania Senate Candidate Kathy Barnette appeared on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream to answer questions about her prior positions, statements and current candidacy. Barnette has climbed in the polls and is in a tight race for the PA senate seat.
There has been an onslaught of criticism and critique in opposition to Kathy Barnette. Many political followers are concerned she might win the primary but then get crushed in the general election due to inflammatory statements in her past. This interview was a great opportunity for her to calm the nerves of republican primary voters and instill confidence. Unfortunately, Barnette did not do well in this interview. WATCH:
Shannon Bream was fair and gave Barnette plenty of time to explain her positions. Pennsylvania voters will need to make their own decisions. Trust your instincts; if you sense sketchy, it is likely because sketchy exists.
In the second segment of the interview with Maria Bartiromo, Devin Nunes and Kash Patel discuss the trial of Michael Sussmann which begins tomorrow. {Direct Rumble Link}
Ultimately the issue in the Michael Sussmann trial is quite simple:
Did the DOJ and FBI know the material Michael Sussmann was giving them came from the Hillary Clinton campaign?
We all know the answer to that question, of course they did. However, there has been –and continues to be– a game of grand pretense from the DOJ/FBI group where they pretend not to have known.
Two groups: the “insider group” (DOJ/FBI) and the “outsider group” (Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS, Clinton campaign, Sussmann, Elias, Mook, etc).
Claiming the DOJ and FBI were duped, is the government firewall that protects the inside group. However, this claim is now against the interest of Michael Sussmann who has been accused of false representation and lying to the FBI about the provenance of the information he provided.
Fox News Maria Bartiromo interviewed Devin Nunes and Kash Patel ahead of the trial for Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann which begins tomorrow. The interview breaks down into two segments, the first segment outlines the discussion of Elon Musk purchasing Twitter. {Direct Rumble Link} WATCH, Part I
The issue of ‘bots’ operating on the Twitter platform is an interesting aspect when you consider the cost of platform operation.
On one hand, extensive auto-generated ‘bots’ would be an issue of cost and data-processing, a net negative. On the other hand, the use of bots would be a manipulative practice for the creation of false impressions to generate advertising revenue.
If the scale of data-processing was subsidized, an outcome of a network of data processing centers -clouds- linked to government resources, the bots would not be an issue for the operation. Despite the false impressions generated, bots would, however, under this weird situation, be useful for the manipulation of the conversation. At the root of Elon Musk’s line of inquiry is the need to discover if this suspicion is true.
Appearing on Face the Nation (FtN) Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein discussed his views and perspectives on the economy overall and U.S. inflation specifically. Undoubtedly Blankfein has access to resources and analysis far beyond CTH scope; however, despite a statistically factual contracting GDP, Blankfein is claiming to see overall demand side inflation remaining in the macro economy.
Perhaps that view might still be true domestically on the service side (it certainly isn’t on the trade side), but demand driven inflation does not appear visible on the goods side of the economic ledger. What is clearly present as the price driver is “production side inflation,” the costs to create goods and bring them to market. If you look at economic activity in units instead of dollars, the units are contracting.
The demand for goods is now focused almost entirely on priority or essential purchases like housing, energy, fuel and food. The price for those essential products is driven by production costs, which are a direct outcome of the energy policy, environmental policy, regulatory policy, and to a lesser extent trade policy, of the Biden administration. Blankfein is pretending not to know things… WATCH:
Putting housing aside due to investment purchasing of real estate, if Blankfein was correct, and demand was still driving inflation, then a massive deflationary cycle would be coming as a result of lowered consumer purchasing of goods. There isn’t any chance we are going to see “deflation” in the next several years. [We will likely see housing prices collapse, but not consumer goods.]
Inflation is being driven by production costs, and there is no end in sight to the production cost increases as long as the crew behind Joe Biden keeps strangling the U.S. energy sector…. and then compounding the domestic price issue by creating incentives for energy exports (vis-a-vis EU sanctions). The production inflation is a purposefully inflicted wound on our economy. Production inflation is avoidable.
That interview is Wall Street gaslighting to a Main Street audience. I don’t like it one bit.
